


cold desert nights

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s08e04 Roadrunners, F/M, mulders here this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 00:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16397630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: What if Mulder had been there in Roadrunners?





	cold desert nights

**Author's Note:**

> i love this prompt so much!! i can’t believe i spent much time on this instead of my casefile but i’ve been waiting for a story like this for so long i decided i should write it myself. (although it got way longer than expected.) i cheated and had doggett in this, but mulder is very much there, too 
> 
> warnings for depiction of the events in roadrunners, and mentions (although definitely not a depiction) of losing a pregnancy.

1\. They return him. They return him, and he’s fairly sure it’s an accident. They return him, and they dump him in his apartment. He wakes up on his living room with no scars and no memories past walking into the circle of abductees in the woods in Oregon. (Well. He has one vague thing that may or may not be a memory: the sound of Scully calling his name. He still has her cross around his neck.)

It takes a few minutes for Mulder to process, and once he does, he doesn’t stop. He runs straight for the phone and dials Scully’s cell number. It rings and rings its way straight to voicemail. He tries three more times before trying her home phone, all to no avail. Frustrated, Mulder digs in his dresser drawer until he finds some money to take a taxi over to her place. If she’s not there, he’ll try the office, and past that, he isn’t sure what he can do. But it’s worth a try. He needs to see her.

He changes before he leaves the house, out of the ragged things that someone could barely call clothes and into pants and a shirt he finds crumpled up by his pillow. It’s probably dirty, but it smells like Scully, so he pulls it on without thinking. He has no idea how long he’s been gone.

2\. Scully’s apartment is empty. He tries the X-Files office next and finds a stranger there. His blood pressure rises instantly—is this why he can’t find her, did they take her, too?—and he is ready to come to blows with this man, to demand to know where they’ve taken her, when the man turns towards him with a look of astonishment and maybe even relief that halts Mulder in his tracks. “Agent Mulder?” he says in surprise.

“Who the hell are you?” Mulder growls fists clenched by his side. “Where’s Scully?”

“I'm…” The man falters, meeting his eyes carefully. “My name is John Doggett,” he says, just as carefully. “I’ve been working with Agent Scully. I’ve been trying to help her find you.” And Mulder is so stunned by this that he can feel all the fight going out of him.

It takes a good few minutes to clear up the whole situation—that Mulder has been missing for a month, that Kersh (fucking Kersh) assigned this Doggett guy to the X-Files, that Doggett doesn’t particularly believe that Mulder was abducted by aliens but they can clear all that up later. By then, Mulder is itching to sock the guy in the jaw, but he holds back. He asks, again, about Scully, and the situation unspools further. Scully went down to Utah to investigate a case, out in the middle of nowhere. She was supposed to meet up with the sheriff, but she never showed. Doggett is headed out there to look for her.

When Mulder hears this, his stomach pitches so hard that he thinks he is going to vomit. He scrambles to his feet angrily. “What the hell were all these pleasantries for?” he blurts. “My partner is missing, and you wanna, what, sit around and shoot the breeze about my abduction?”

“Agent Mulder, up until a few minutes ago, you were a missing person yourself,” Agent Doggett says, almost gently. “But it’s okay. I’m gonna find her.”

“The fuck you are,” Mulder snaps, turning angrily towards the door. “She’s my partner. I am not just gonna sit here while she’s in danger out there!” He already feels sick at the fact that he wasn’t here, that she was out there alone. He wants to throw up.

“Agent Mulder!” Doggett catches his arm and Mulder shakes it off, nearly violently. “Agent Mulder, you just got back from an abduction! You’re in no condition to go galavanting off on some dangerous wild goose chase.” He grabs Mulder’s arm and Mulder shakes it off hard, glaring searingly at the other man, this man who has come in here and taken over his office and let his partner walk straight into danger. He should’ve been with her.

“You don’t even know where she is,” Doggett adds, softer. “You don’t know how to find her.”

Mulder scowls at the other man, furious. “I’m going for her,” he snarls. And that is that.

3\. They find a dusty little cult town in the middle of nowhere in Utah, filled with the eerie types of cultists Mulder has seen a dozen different times before. But this time, they have his partner. He’s ready to fight them off, to barge in there and save her, but Doggett holds him back. Convinces him to wait. They sneak back in as soon as they have a chance, wander down the hall.

As they go down the hall, Mulder can hear it: the muffled, pained moans. His stomach turns painfully. He isn’t sure whether he should hope that it’s her, because it means she’s alive, or pray that it isn’t, because Jesus Christ. He wants to shove his way down the hall and fight off whoever is in there, but Doggett is the only one with a gun.

They find Scully tied face down to the bed, a nasty wound in her back and a rippling along her spine that reminds him frighteningly of Alaska eight years ago, a strange man standing over her. Mulder’s chest clenches, and he moves without thinking, either towards Scully or her captor, but Doggett gets there first, knocking the man out like a light. Mulder feels his first pang of gratefulness towards the man as he runs to Scully’s side, lands on his knees beside the bed.

Scully was still groaning when they came in the room, either in pain or in an attempt to talk through the gag, but she quietens as soon as she sees him. Her eyes widen. Something like fear flickers over her face.

Does she not recognize him? Head pounding, heart thudding, Mulder unknots the gag and pulls it away, whispering, “Scully, it’s me. It’s me. It’s okay, we’re going to get you out of here.”

She’s still staring at him with the widest fucking eyes, tears welling in her eyes. When the gag is removed, she seems somewhat speechless. She whispers, “Mulder?” in a small, astonished voice, and Mulder wants to cry himself. He can’t believe he ever left her. He works at the knots around her wrists, nodding at her gently.

“You’re here,” she whispers, shaking some circulation into one freed hand before reaching up to touch the side of his face. “How did you…”

“It’s okay, Agent Scully,” Doggett says, untying her feet at the foot of the bed, and she shifts a little to meet his eyes. “We came to get you.”

Finished with the knots, Mulder rubs the indent along one wrist before reaching up to touch the side of her head gently. “Can you stand?” he whispers, and tears well up. She shifts to her side, wincing and whimpering a little in pain, and he’s ready to gently push her back, reassure her that he’s got her, but she’s already wrapping her arms tight around his neck. He hugs her back tightly, unable to resist but knowing they don’t have a lot of time.

“We’ve got to get going,” says Doggett, not unkindly. “We’ve got about a half a mile walk to the car.”

Sniffling, Scully shakes her head, draws back from his embrace a bit to look at Doggett. “I know somewhere closer,” she says.

Mulder nods and draws back, standing and scooping Scully into his arms, trying to avoid the wound on her back. She groans softly as he moves her, but she leans into him, more willing than he’s ever seen her in this type of situation. One hand gripping his shirt hard, her face pressed into his neck. “Are you okay,” she mumbles, and he wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. He doesn’t remember a thing, doesn’t know if it was painful, but he knows that he never should’ve left her. He never should’ve gone alone.

“Oh, Scully,” he murmurs to her temple as they follow Agent Doggett out of the room. “I’m okay. I’m just fine. And you will be, too.”

4\. She tells him on the bus. After Doggett is finished cutting the slug out of her, because she’s shouting that it needs to be cut out and Mulder wants to do it but he can’t. His hands are shaking too badly. So he holds hers, lets her squeeze the life out of them as she screams, as the cultists pound on the bus, as Doggett pulls out the slug and shoots it. The cultists are dismayed. Mulder can see the flashing lights through the dusty window of the bus. As Doggett runs outside to deal with it all, Scully collapses woozily against his chest. He presses a quivering hand over the bloody wound at the back of her neck, and he realizes only then that she is sobbing. “It’s okay,” he whispers in frantic reassurance, pressing one hand against the wound and wrapping his free arm around her shoulders. “Honey, it’s okay, you’re okay, I’m going to get you out of here. You’re going to be fine.”

Woozy, she sways a bit in place, but she draws back to look at him. To look him in the eye. She takes his hand in hers and squeezed weakly and mumbles, “I’m pregnant, Mulder.” And the shock of it is like ice water, like the last thing he was ever expected.

“I’m pregnant,” she says, nearly whimpering. “And… the baby… you have to make sure they didn’t hurt it. You have to make sure it’s okay. Tell the doctors I’m pregnant, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers, still shellshocked. It’s night in the desert and it’s freezing; he pulls off his jacket and wraps it around her. “I’ll make sure it’s okay. You… you’re both gonna be fine.”

She collapses against him again, close to passing out, and he scoops her up again, holding her close to his chest. The blood is sticky red on the back of her neck, and he bites back a sob. He stands, carefully, and her head lolls against his shoulder. She mumbles, so softly he almost misses it, “I wanted to tell you so bad.”

Tears drip down his face, and he makes no effort to stop them. Doggett shouts for them and he carries Scully off of the bus, holding her close all the way to the ambulance.

5\. He stays by her side in the hospital, watches them stitch up the wound. Sits by her bed and holds her hand tightly. He tells them about the baby in a quivering, uncertain voice, and they assure him that they will do an ultrasound as soon as Scully wakes up. They ask if he’s the father and he says yes without thinking. It feels like a lie. They ask more questions—how far along she is, when her last ultrasound was—and he cannot answer those. It isn’t until they leave that he remembers what Doggett said before: that he was only gone a month. That he remembers that Scully was sick in Oregon, feeling nauseous, collapsing on the forest floor. He holds her knuckles to his lips and hopes that the worst has not come out of this all.

She’s going to be okay, they tell her, and the baby will likely be okay, too. They’ll check as soon as she’s awake.

He hears her waking up before he sees her: the rustling of the sheets, the soft gasp. He looks up at her and sees her staring at him tearily. She reaches for his hand and he takes it, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Hey,” he mumbles, kissing her palm. “Welcome back.”

“You’re really here,” she whispers, nearly in awe. “I wasn’t sure if I dreamed it.”

He shakes his head, her hand shifting to cup the side of his face. “No, I’m here,” he says softly. “I’m so sorry I left you, Scully.”

She shakes her head firmly, her thumb stroking the side of his cheek. “I told you to go,” she mumbles, woozy, and tears well up in her eyes. “It’s not your… Jesus, Mulder, I was so worried. I couldn’t find you.”

“Scully,” he whispers, thumbing her tears away. He kisses her forehead gently. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

She sniffles shakily, wraps her arms tight around his neck. “Where did they take you?” she croaks into his shoulder. “Did they hurt you?”

“I don’t remember,” he admits, bent over the bed, wrapped around her. “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t.”

Her fingers dig into his back; she lets out a sob against his shirt. “The baby?” she mutters.

He strokes her back, her side. “They’re going to do an ultrasound,” he says. “But they said that they thought it’d be fine. That… the baby. The baby will be fine.” His voice cracks, and he squeezes her close.

“God, I hope so,” Scully chokes out, quivering in his embrace. “Mulder, I feel so ashamed. For putting the baby in danger… our baby… I can’t believe I did that.”

The words our baby make him shake, too. With shock, with disbelief. With joy. He strokes a hand over the back of her head, draws back and wipes her tears away. “You couldn’t have known…” he says quietly. “You didn’t do it on purpose.”

She slips her hands into his, sniffles, blinks hard. “I shouldn’t have gone alone,” she says in the tiniest voice. “I shouldn’t. I don’t know why I did it now, it all seems so stupid… I never wanted to put the baby in danger. Ever.” Her thumbs brush the underside of his wrists, over his pulse, and her head falls against his shoulder. “I found out after you went to Oregon,” she says. “Before I… knew you were gone. And I wanted to tell you so badly, Mulder. After everything that happened with the IVF… after t-the things you said in Oregon… I wanted to tell you. And I had no idea… I tried so hard to find you. I didn’t know that I’d ever see you again.” She tugs hard at his shirt, her nose pressed into his collarbone.

He wipes his eyes with unsteady fingers, presses a kiss to the spot on her neck where her chip is, just above the place where her stitches begin. He cups the back of her head, kisses her sloppily under her jaw. “I can’t believe this is real,” he says, hushed. “I can’t believe… Scully, this is so incredible.” She makes a small sound in the back of her throat. “I love you,” he adds, and she hugs him harder. “I… I love you both so much.” He strokes her hair again, slips his hand down to cover her stomach.

“I love you,” she gasps out. She presses her hand over his as she leans back against the pillows, looks up at him with wide, teary eyes. Laces their fingers over the spot where their baby is growing. “I just…” she says, breaking off on a wavering hiccup. “I hope we haven’t lost this. I… I don’t think I could bear losing this again.”

“Hey.” He thumbs her tears away, his own. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. We haven’t lost this. You’re just fine, and so is our baby.” Our baby. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She shuts her eyes, presses her hands harder over his. “Thanks for coming to get me,” she whispers, and he chuckles, leans down to press his forehead against hers. Unclasps the cross and presses it into her palm.

6\. A couple hours later, they do the ultrasound. The baby is fine, they reassure them. The baby is just fine. And Scully is going to be fine, too.

They both cry when they see the screen, the image of the baby. When they hear the heartbeat thrumming. They cling to each other’s hands, their eyes glued to the screen.


End file.
